the de facto standard for making HTTP requests in Python

Requests

import requests

# make a GET request to GitHub’s Root REST API
response = requests.get('https://api.github.com')

# view the request url
response.request.url

Request headers

header key definition
Content-type specifies the data/body type of the request
Accept specifies the content type of the response
header value definition
application/json asdf
application/json; charset=utf-8 asdf
application/x-www-form-urlencoded asdf 
response = requests.get('https://....', headers={'key': 'value'})

# view all the request headers (as a CaseInsensitiveDict)
response.request.headers

# access a specific request header (key is case insenstitive)
response.request.headers['Content-Type']
response.request.headers['content-type']

Request body

Also called the request data.

# using a dictionary or a list of tuples
response = requests.post('https://httpbin.org/post', data={'key':'value'})
response = requests.post('https://httpbin.org/post', data=[('key', 'value')])

# view the request body
response.request.body

Alternatively, if you need to send JSON data you can use the json parameter (in which case requests will serialize your data and add the correct Content-Type header for you).

response = requests.post('https://httpbin.org/post', json={'key':'value'})
json_response = response.json()
json_response['data']
json_response['headers']['Content-Type']

Request querys

# e.g. search GitHub's repositories for requests
response = requests.get(
    'https://api.github.com/search/repositories',
    params={'q': 'requests+language:python'},
)

# same as above, but using a list of tuples
response = requests.get(
    'https://api.github.com/search/repositories',
    params=[('q', 'requests+language:python')]
)

# same as above, but using bytes
response = requests.get(
    'https://api.github.com/search/repositories',
    params=b'q=requests+language:python'
)

Request authentication

requests.get('https://api.github.com/user', auth=('username', 'password'))

Responses

Response status

Code Status
200 successful
204 successful, but no content returned
400 bad request
401 unauthorized
404 resource not found

(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes)

# get the status code
response.status_code

# check that the request was successful
if not response:
    print('An error has occurred.')

# alternatively, raise an exception if the request was unsuccessful
response.raise_for_status()

Response content

Also known as a payload.

# see the response's content in bytes
response.content

# see the response's content as a string
response.text

# you can view/set the encoding used for converting they bytes to a string
response.encoding

# see the response's content (as a dict)
response.json()

Response headers

# view all the response headers (as a CaseInsensitiveDict)
response.headers

# access a specific response header (key is case insenstitive)
response.headers['Content-Type']
response.headers['content-type']